Information as a replacement for intelligence
We pursue information to become more intelligent but what if the opposite is happening?
Jaakko Järviniemi
Blog posts by Jaakko on thinking, health, business, personal finance, life's big themes and more.
Latest posts
Mental gymnastics through which it becomes virtuous to destroy the world
How to improve your life and the world, with a minimal chance you're accidentally producing more harm than good.
25 contrarian health principles
Contrarian rules for health, including diet & exercise. 25 principles of healthy living that you won't see in mainstream media.
Survival of the least stimulated
Supernormal stimuli hijack our evolutionary instinct. It's only a matter of time before those who can't resist stimulation exit the gene pool.
The Quicksand Theory of Pessimism
Optimism is a choice, even though pessimism seems to be the default. This theory explains why.
Anti-consumerism is less about money, more about individuality
Anti-consumerism saves you money. But more importantly, it saves your thoughts, core values and life goals from outside influences.
We need to rethink exercise
Why exercise sucks. Gyms do to exercise what schools do to learning. And the case for the "bodymath" (polymath of the body).
Debug your brain
How to remove the bugs in your brain software. Those natural tendencies that used to serve us, but fail to do so in the modern world.
Marketing, in 18 bullet points
For the past 3 years, I’ve been collecting marketing tips for personal reference. Here are the tips I come back to the most.
Discover your meaning by reduction, not addition
To find your meaning, invert conventional advice. Remove external desire until only internal desire remains.
50 ideas
A list of ideas that have had a profound impact on how I view the world and make decisions.
Signaling is a shortcut - if they signal, update downwards
Signaling is a shortcut. Instead of changing reality, we try to change perception. If they claim to be intelligent, update your perception of their intelligence downwards.
The full spectrum of the human experience
Variation is what makes life worth living. Yet, look around, and you see we're removing variation from all areas of our lives. This is a call to bring it back.
Things that are hard to begin but near-impossible to quit
Things you can do once that will benefit you forever: foundational principles, foundational answers, foundational problems.
First you add. Then you reduce.
Constant pattern in life: First you add, then realize that addition wasn’t optimal, so then you’ll reduce.
Create the problem, sell the solution
At the heart of modern marketing and consumerism is a simple, though well-hidden principle: Create the problem, sell the solution.
Ignore writing advice, you want idea advice instead
Instead of trying to wow them with your writing, wow them with the idea. Most writing advice is not in your best interests because it merely helps you get away with bad ideas, instead of helping you get and develop better ideas.
Passive productivity: Get more done, by default
Increase your default level of productivity. Passive productivity is a way to achieve more without doing more, because you have increased your performance once and for all.
Paul Graham 101
A summary of Paul Graham’s 200+ essays. This is an introduction to his ideas on startups, writing, society, decision-making and more.